NEW ENGLAND CONFERENCE OF PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSIONERS, INC.

50 Forest Falls Drive, Suite 6

Yarmouth. Maine 04096-6937

207.846.5440

Hon. Tim Woolf William M. Nugent

President Executive Director

8 September 2010

Hon. Lisa P. Jackson, Administrator

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

Air and Radiation Docket

Mail Code 6102T

1200 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W.

Washington, DC 20460

RE: Proposed Rule – EPA Docket: OAR-2008-0708

 EPA-HQ-OAR-2010-0295

Dear Administrator Jackson:

The New England Conference of Public Utility Commissioners 

(“NECPUC”) appreciates the opportunity to comment on EPA’s proposed rule, 

National Emission Standards for Hazardous Air Pollutants (“NESHAPS”) for 

Reciprocating Internal Combustion Engines (the “Final Rule”), published in the 

Federal Register at 75 Fed. Reg. 9,648 (March 3, 2010). The comments herein 

focus on one major issue of concern to NECPUC: EPA’s revised definition for 

emergency demand response and a request that EPA reconsider the italicized 

language below from § 63.6640(f)(4) of the Final Rule that limits engines used in 

emergency demand response (“DR”) programs to a maximum of 15 hours per 

year: 

The 50 hours per year for non-emergency situations cannot be 

used for peak shaving or to generate income for a facility to 

supply power to an electric grid or otherwise supply power as 

part of a financial arrangement with another entity; except that 

owners and operators may operate the emergency engine for a 

maximum of 15 hours per year as part of a DR program if the 

regional transmission organization or equivalent balancing 

authority and transmission operator has determined there are 

emergency conditions that could lead to a potential electrical 

blackout, such as unusually low frequency, equipment overload, 

capacity or energy deficiency, or unacceptable voltage level.
NECPUC shares EPA’s concern that market rules should discourage the 

operation of emergency generators to satisfy on-peak demand unless emergency 

generation is necessary to address a genuine system emergency. 

However, in the ISO New England (ISO-NE) footprint, these resources are 

only activated in an attempt to maintain ten-minute reserves during the late 

stages of a system emergency. ISO New England, Inc. Transmission, Markets and 

Services Tariff, FERC Electric Tariff No.3, issued December 22, 2004. With 

respect to the need for emergency generation in genuine system emergencies 

(blackouts and brownouts), NECPUC believes that the current market rules and 

definitions that ISO-NE has established, which provide strict and precise 

conditions, are stringent enough to adequately limit the use of emergency engines 

from purely financial endeavors. NECPUC urges EPA to consider adopting rules 

such as those currently in effect in New England through the ISO-NE tariff, or 

allowing regions to set up their own rules that limit the use of emergency engines 

in such a way as to comply with the intent of the EPA’s proposed guidelines but 

without strictly limiting the number of hours of participation. 

NECPUC also is concerned that the case for making the proposed rule 

change is not definitive based on a review of various research reports. NECPUC 

would encourage EPA to review the report prepared by independent consultants, 

Synapse Energy Economics, Inc., referenced in the Petition for Reconsideration 

filed by CPower, Inc. (“CPower”), EnergyConnect, Inc. (“EnergyConnect”), 

EnerNOC, Inc. (“EnerNOC”), and Innoventive Power, LLC (“Innoventive”) 

(collectively the “Companies”) that reached the conclusion that the availability of 

these resources can improve air quality when they are used to provide system 

reserves, under certain dispatch models. These dispatch scenarios would have 

emergency engines providing non-spinning quick start reserves in place of old 

load-following boilers providing spinning reserves through their operation at 

minimum load.

NECPUC believes that these real-time emergency generation resources are 

an integral part of the resource mix that displace the purchase of other types of 

capacity and play an integral role in maintaining system reliability.

NECPUC respectfully submits these comments for EPA’s consideration in 

developing a final rule. We welcome further discussion on this issue and offer 

our assistance to EPA as work proceeds on development of a final rule.

Sincerely,

/s/

William M. Nugent,

Executive Director